Potholes, cracks, and other road problems associated with road surface deterioration are encountered very often on highways and other paved surfaces such as airport runways or parking lots, especially where there is a heavy traffic pattern over the surface by heavy vehicles. The conventional methods for repairing these road surfaces require a significant amount of labor intensive activity to repair these surfaces and even then the repairs are many times of questionable quality and questionable durability. This process is time consuming and poses a significant impediment to traffic flows that are very costly in terms of delays and safety hazards. Typically, one or more workers walk along the road surface to observe road surface problems and direct the driver of a vehicle to position the dispenser on a truck over the problem area in the road surface to dispense material which is many times tamped into place by hand. This labor intensive process is expensive in terms of time expended and the number of times the process must be repeated to finally fix the surface sufficiently to accommodate the traffic pattern. This process is also a problem in that many repair people are exposed to potentially harmful chemical substances and the threat of bodily injury from their equipment as well as the traffic in which they are working.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,294,210 and 5,364,205 describe a method and an apparatus for automated pothole sensing and filling having a starting level of automation to handle the finding and filling of potholes. This equipment is limited to finding and filling larger holes which may involve only large translation of sensors and outlets for filling materials. It would only be suitable for dispensing molten asphalt or similar materials which would require considerable set and cure times. This would also require stopping the vehicle to accomplish the task in an efficient way and sectioning off whole segments of the highway to keep vehicles from getting into the repairs too soon. This would slow traffic patterns to an extent that there would be little value added with the use of such equipment which may explain why it has not been adopted for large scale use.